


Hutch's Song

by Dawnwind



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch's life is a song he wants to share with a certain someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hutch's Song

The rhythm of Ken Hutchinson's days was an unending melody that accompanied him like the background music in a Hollywood movie. Sometimes it was just a pleasant little tune spiraling in the back of his brain as he went about his business. Other times, it was loud and insistent, a particular song for a specific era.

His early years had been a sweet canticle, threaded through with the usual tunes of childhood. First, Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star and Ring a' round the Rosies. As he grew, he discovered the emerging rock legends and wove his inner music with theirs—drum beats merging into his heartbeat.

He discovered the guitar early on, a gift from his aunt. While learning to pick out simple camp tunes like Michael, Row your boat Ashore and then the more intricate melodies of classical Spanish guitar, he grew and flourished, finding a talent for music that became his enduring companion. He listened to Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, creating his own brand of soul played out in meters and notes that spelled Ken.

Girls in high school brought sweet harmonies of first love; flaxen haired beauties running along the beach in time with Brian Wilson's inner longings. That was, until Vanessa burst onto the scene. She brought an entirely new chord that vibrated up Ken's spine, igniting exciting sensations that he couldn't ignore.

There was a meet and greet frat party, every freshman's inauguration into the world of college —lots of beer, marijuana and a couple of guys with harder drugs.

Ken wasn't interested in experimenting with different levels of consciousness, not yet anyway. Not when he'd only just begun the first stanza of adulthood. He liked his beer well enough, and it was entirely legal. He'd grabbed two beers and gone out of the porch to escape the pall of smoke hanging over the main room, pot and tobacco mingling into a potent blend that had the power to intoxicate all on its own. Lounging against the wooden sign proclaiming this the Phi Kappa Phi house, he waited for Mary Sue Alquist. One beer for himself and one for her. She was late, so he drank both.

A gaggle of girls showed up together, four blonds surrounding one stunning brunette. In the breadth of a second, he fell hard. Mary Sue was a thing of the past when there was such a goddess before his eyes.

"The summit of beauty and love, and Venus was her name…she's got it, yeah baby, she's got it…" Frankie Valley crooned from the record player inside the house, and every syllable described Vanessa to a T. She even had the same first letter in her name as the famed Roman goddess.

"Ken?" Mary Sue bumped her ample hip against his, claiming her stake like a gold miner in old California.

"Kitten." He gave her a distracted peck on the cheek to signal that he was aware of her presence, unsure how to explain to her that she'd lost all rights to his body after today. The brunette brushed her hair back, a languid, inviting smile curving her lips. The beer and pot had nothing on her, she was intoxication personified.

Hutch glanced away to collect himself, dredging up one last smile for Mary Sue with her flaxen hair and girl-next-door-prettiness. "MS, who are all these lovely ladies?"

"You know Debra and Susan Swift," she waved at two of the blonds. Both waggled their fingers at Ken as they trooped inside the frat house. "This is Betty Clausen and…"

"Vanessa," she said, in a low purr that drew his balls up.

"Can I get you two some beer?" he asked lamely, because truly, he couldn't manage two intelligent thoughts in a row with Vanessa that close. His cock was attempting the oldest dance in the world all by itself.

"I want a Coke!" Mary Sue said brightly, a rigid smile on her face. She might be vapid, but she couldn't miss the erection drilling a hole in his slacks. "Van, could you go get me one? Ken already has a beer."

"I'll bet he'd like something much, much stronger." Van flipped her long dark hair over one shoulder, amusement flickering in her eyes. She knew her power and she knew just how to wield it to slay the mortal man. Mary Sue didn't stand a chance.

Vanessa became Hutch's anthem and his internal tuning fork. Every breath he drew in was modified to her pitch.

It wasn't until they had been married and were moving to California that Ken realized that he should have listened to the entire song before tangling with such a woman.

"Her weapons were her crystal eyes… Black as the dark night she was…"

Life became a jagged, discordant tempo that made even walking in a straight line a chore. The symphonies of Hindemith, non-diatonic and disturbing, tuned the pulse in Hutch's arteries. He never knew from one day to the next what was expected of him. His parents pulled from one side and Vanessa from the other, leaving Ken in the middle, exhausted. The guitar he'd poured all his teenage anguish into was forgotten in a back closet, along with all the early, vague fantasies of becoming a folk-singer or serious musician. Who was he fooling? He'd never gotten up the courage to perform on stage yet.

The law, his father insisted. That was where the money was. Law school, a few years as a low level apprentice in some legal firm, and then his own practice, currying favor with all the big-wigs of Duluth. Except there was no song there, no passion, just flat notes in a minor key. Even after the young Hutchinsons moved to California so that Ken could attend UCLA, his father's voice could still be heard, with a constant refrain of "get a job, get a job…"

It got so bad that every time he heard the song by the Silhouettes on the staticky radio in the kitchen, he had to switch to another station, preferably an all talk, news hour. "Get a job, sha na na na…". The inane and unending chorus of 'yip, yip yip, mum, mum, mum…" drilled holes in what was left of his brain, draining out anything he'd learned in Advanced Legal Ethics and Corporate Law 101.

"Why do you do that?" Van would snipe. "I like that song."

She would. She'd driven everything else out of his soul, including a desire for sex, so naturally, she would like something that he abhorred. The melody of life was very, very faint in those dark days.

Still, Hutch could not avoid music. It was the fabric of the universe, and no matter how hard he tried to ignore his inner song, the external ones called to him. Sometimes it was a subtle whisper in his ear, and other times it was as though a marching band paraded right down the street just for him.

The modulation of his life came quite unexpectedly. He'd flunked his midterm exam and was waiting for the bus, defeated and dreading what came next. If asked—not that his father ever would, Hutch would have had to admit that he really didn't want to pass Intro to Estate Law. He was mentally preparing a reasonable explanation for why he might have to take the supposedly easy class over when a cab pulled up against the painted curb of the bus stop. The radio blaring through the taxi's open window made the lyrics impossible to miss; "I got a star on my car and one on my chest, A gun on my hip and the right to arrest. I'm the guy who's the boss on this highway."

"Hey, buddy!" a voice called out from the interior of the taxi, barely audible over the pop song. Hutch frowned, peering inside but the driver was wearing a cap and it was difficult to see his face. "You call for a ride to the police department?"

"No." He was startled, something deep inside jumping up and down made him uneasily aware of his racing heartbeat. "J-just waiting for the midtown…"

"That would be me, sonny." A tiny woman, the personification of the apple dolls Hutch's grandmother had displayed on her breakfront, hobbled out of the building behind him, waving a black purse at the cabby. "Get me downtown, quick, I have to bail that good for nothing son of mine out of jail." She jumped in, slamming the passenger door behind her.

The cab left with a belch of noxious exhaust, leaving the song floating in its wake, "If you break the law, you'll hear from me, I know. I'm a-workin' for the state, I'm The Highway Patrol."

Breaking the law—well, Law had certainly all but broken Hutch. He chuckled nervously, the tune circling endlessly in his head. Something tiny but profound resonated deep inside him, but he wasn't quite sure what that meant. Fingering his loose change, he examined the coins. Good old Abe Lincoln on the back of a penny, a plain, good man who studied hard, became a lawyer and eventually president. Too bad Dick Hutchinson did not have him for a son.

But the other side of the coin was entirely different. He flipped the penny—heads or tails?

And he got tails. Maybe it was time for a change? Law school was not the answer. His future was receding into the distance like looking into the wrong end of a telescope. What if he turned everything around, went after the law in a whole different direction?

As if an answer to some cosmic question, the bus pulled up. Across the side was a huge banner advertisement; "Make a difference, join the Bay City Police Department."

The Halleluiah chorus erupted so loudly inside his head that Hutch was sure every other rider could hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir shouting their accord. When he dropped his fare into the box by the driver, his hands were trembling.

It was remarkably simple. A few phone calls, some paperwork and a test that he aced under the allotted time, and Hutch was future cadet of the BCPD. He danced into the registrar's office at UCLA to drop out of fucking Estate Law and Corporate Ethics. He dug through the closet to unearth his guitar and picked out the notes to some of his old favorites, joy reawakening with each new song. The music of the spheres became his own once again, knitting up some of the frayed edges.

"I haven't heard that one in a long time." Vanessa leaned against the door jam of the front door, her expression soft.

Hutch looked up, his fingers moving almost of their own accord, memorized chords as simple as child's play. Except, when he listened to the tune, it was a mournful medieval roundelay, bittersweet and poignant—a song of lost love. Vanessa frowned, watching him, pensive interest merging into tight distain.

He watched her and knew that she knew. They had lost whatever they'd once had.

"Jesus, Ken." Vanessa shrugged out of her bright blue jacket. "Sounds like some damned romantic claptrap from an old movie. Play something happy, like Tears of a Clown." She turned her back on him and Hutch had the need to wound, rip that snide superiority right out of her.

"I dropped out of law school this morning," he said abruptly, strumming the opening notes of Nights in White Satin. He could hear the Moody Blues singing as if they were in the room with them.

"Letters I've written, never meaning to send. Beauty I'd always missed  
With these eyes before, Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore…"

"What?" Her voice rose, a sharp, fingernail-screech. Hutch winced, nearly breaking a guitar string. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"A change, Van. Something new." He set the guitar on the ground, all interest in strumming gone.

"Without telling anyone else?"

She'd pulled the truth out into the open. He'd done all the preparations in secret, afraid of a scene with his father, his wife, even his student advisor at UCLA. Ken Hutchinson, the brave future police officer was really a coward. "I'm starting with the police academy in three weeks."

"You're insane," Van snarled. "Fucking great, Ken, what the hell did you do that for?"

Ken slept on the couch that night, and for most of the next three weeks. He didn't really care, even after Van coaxed him back into her bed two nights before his first class. She liked the regulation haircut he'd gotten, and there was a light in her eyes when he modeled the academy blues and spit shined black shoes. Who knew Vanessa would go for a man in uniform? It was no longer important. They were still married, and he would honor that for as long as he could make the marriage work, but he could feel the unseen forces altering his life forever.

As a sort of farewell to UCLA, they attended the drama department's production of West Side Story, Vanessa's favorite musical. Hutch came away with "Something's coming, I don't know what it is but it is gonna be great…" ringing in his ears.

With that song as his talisman, Hutch set out for the academy bright and early, happy for the first time in years. He got off the bus as the sun rose over the mountains that ringed Bay City and stopped in front of the iron gates of the academy to watch the daily display of brilliance. Memories assailed him, of August mornings with his grandfather, and camping trips to the rocky northern Minnesota lake country. Wild blueberries, bright blue and sweet as nectar. He used to strip the bushes of every visible berry and eat his fill with listening to his grandfather play old Danish songs on his battered guitar. They'd called the place Blueberry Hill, and when Fat Domino's song of the same name hit the airwaves, he'd always sung along with the radio. "I found my—"

"Thrill on…" A voice behind him broke his reverie. The mystery singer drew the word thrill out like pulled taffy and attacked the title with explosive exuberance. "Blueberry Hill!"

Stunned at the convergence of past and present, Hutch turned to see another man dressed in the cadet uniform striding up from the parking lot. There was no self-consciousness in his loud, boisterous singing. He was happy, and wanted every person within hearing distance to know.

"The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill!" His voice was rough and while not off key, lacked a certain polish, but all in all, Hutch liked the rendition. "And lingered till my dreams came true…"

"Fats Domino fan?" Hutch asked pleasantly.

"The man is a living legend." The other cadet held out his hand. "David Starsky, future BC detective."

"Ken Hutchinson." Hutch took his hands, feeling something altogether more than a simple handshake would warrant. It was as if a current flashed along Starsky's arm across their connected palms and up to his own shoulder. "You have lofty ambitions." He looked into Starsky's eyes seconds before breaking the connection and saw instantly that Starsky had felt the sudden spark, too.

"Got to." Starsky bounced on the balls of his feet. "I don't see myself running around giving out speeding tickets and breaking up bar fights for the rest of my life. I want to investigate, figure out what makes some guy shove a knife in some other guy or why one man shoots another one ."

"Anger, jealousy," Hutch suggested, drawn into the notion that there could be more than petty emotions causing violence. "Desire, greed and deceit."

"Yeah, but did that guy cheat with the other guy's wife? Or maybe con him outta his life's savings?" Starsky headed up the steep sloped walkway to the main buildings of the academy. Old Spanish style architecture and tall eucalyptus trees lent serenity to the school. "If that was the only reason for murder, we'd all be taking each other out for spilling the soup or arguing with the boss…" He faltered slightly but continued with more passion in his voice. "Nobody's got the right to get away with murder."

Walking at his side, Hutch listened to Starsky's observations, wondering what had brought them together. Had some small twist of fate brought Starsky here to this campus, just as it had for him? He wanted to get to know this man, for reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Something's coming, I don't know what it but it is gonna be great….

"This is gonna be great!" Starsky spread his arms to encompass all of their new classmates. "You just wait, Hutch, we'll be at the top of the class."

Hutch. Hutch laughed. That was what he'd called himself once upon a time. No one had ever used the moniker except for his high school track coach and a couple of friends on the team. His parents always thought the nickname too common, beneath them. His mother used to say, "Kenneth is such a noble name, full of promise." But he'd never seen it that way. Especially after his younger sister Karen got a Barbie and Ken, leaving Hutch feeling like he was nothing but a warm-blooded version of the fashion doll.

He liked being Hutch. There was something easy and less stilted about Hutch. That guy could do anything, go anywhere he wanted to go. Hutch, the academy cadet, not Ken, the law student. He wanted to be Hutch, sing his own song, and find his true voice.

"Starsky, no one could ever accuse you of low self-esteem." Hutch chuckled.

"Why not put yourself out front, huh?" Starsky asked, head cocked, his eyes bright. Hutch was transfixed by those blue eyes, drawn in without a whisper of protest.

The first days and weeks of the academy flew by. Hutch found himself engaged in the required subjects in a way he had never been at law school. He had a slight edge in some classes because of his prior knowledge of the law, and was often sought out by other cadets as a study partner. Most of them picked his brain for the answers. Starsky, on the other hand, sparked him to dive into the familiar discourse on the laws of California. Following Starsky's lead, Hutch didn't just sit back and accept what was taught, he challenged the status-quo and gave the older cops teaching the courses a run for their money.

It was so amazingly easy to like Starsky, to be with Starsky. He had a keen eye for detail and an even keener ability on the shooting range. He gave Hutch pointers on marksmanship, and Hutch worked with him on the intricacies of arrest procedure and criminal statutes. They complimented each other perfectly, a major chord played with one hand on the piano, absolutely in harmony without a single missed note.

Hutch looked forward to study nights when he and Starsky were on their own. The required courses and lesson plans often went out the window after a couple beers, turning into fun evenings of easy banter and burgeoning friendship.

Starsky stuffed the last bite of a salami sub into his mouth and wiped mustard off his cheek with the back of his sleeve. "Okay, so I think I got the wording of this Miranda thing down. You have the right to remain silent, and so on… but man, it makes it damned hard to arrest a guy even if he's got the smoking gun still in his hand."

"Which is as it should be." Hutch handed Starsky a paper napkin and indicated the swipe of mustard still on his chin. "It shouldn't be easy to arrest someone. 'Miranda vs. Arizona' had only just been decided in court when I took one of my first classes in jurisprudence, and we studied the transcripts extensively. No one should be forced into confessing until they know exactly what their rights are under the constitution."

"Yeah, but Hutch," Starsky almost whined. "What about some dumb schmuck who stands on the street corner flashing his Johnson? He's obviously guilty. Don't need no lawyer to prove that."  
d  
"He could have underlying reasons. Maybe he's…"

"Crazy, that's what he is," Starsky declared, breaking into song. He elongated every repetition of the word crazy, out-twanging Patsy Cline herself. "Cra-zy! I'm crazy for trying and cra-zy for crying…."

"And crazy for loving you," Hutch finished, laughing. And knew that he did. Improbably, he loved this goofy man more than anyone else on earth.

"Got you to crack a smile." Starsky winked. "Looks better on you than that ten pound weight you carry on your shoulders."

"Starsk, it's okay, don't…" Hutch closed his textbook, looking up at the wall clock in Starsky's tiny studio apartment. The second hand always slipped, so it took a little math to figure out the actual time on the clock face. "Damn, it's after eleven, I have to go."

"The wicked witch of the west sharpening her talons?" Starsky asked lightly. "Since you sleep on the couch there, why don't you stay here? You could sleep on my couch just as easily."

"Maybe another time, buddy." Hutch tugged on his letterman jacket and collected the scattered books and papers he needed for their midterm exam in the morning. "Can you pick me up tomorrow?"

"Get a car, yip, yip, nah, nah nah…" Starsky sang to the tune of the old Silhouette's song, getting up to lock the door behind him.

"Saving my pennies. Literally," Hutch said.

For the first time ever, that song made him happy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Shortly after he was partnered with Starsky and on the one year anniversary of his graduation from the academy, Vanessa left Hutch. He never expected that her absence would create a hole in his life. The empty apartment was too quiet, bereft of the harmonics of their marriage—discordant though they may have been. He wanted a soul mate to make beautiful music with, and tuned up his guitar for love songs.

Ladies were plentiful, gyrating to the disco beat that utterly defeated him. He heard smoky jazzy rifts and the blended harmonies of folk. Waiting for the right woman to come along, Hutch experimented with all different women, trying to find the one who sang only to him. He'd once thought that he could find his mate because she would know the notes to his song. But not a single lady even came close.

Without female companionship, he spent many hours with Starsky. They could talk for hours, subjects ranging from the right way to play chess to car engines, art appreciation, love and music.

Hutch acquired an old piano and picked out tunes on the black and white keys, then transposing the music for the guitar. He wrote little odes to lost love and found passions, finding a satisfaction in the creation of something beautiful. Starsky was his best audience and an unabashed fan, applauding even the simplest melodies.

Sometimes, he sang along, his deeper voice a counterpoint to Hutch's tenor. "All I need is black bean soup, and you to make it with me…"

If Hutch failed in the pursuit of love, the pain of loss was fleeting with Starsky there to back him up after Abby, Gillian, Anna and the rest of his one-hit wonders.

The rhythm of Hutch's days synchronized with Starsky's melody. Their canon played on as all do, with movements in various modalities—some major, some minor key, but rarely with a single note of dissonance. Theirs was a waltz, a dance for two, performed to music only they heard, and he grew less interested in finding a woman.

Bay City had a downbeat all its own, full of rumbling cars, shrieking alarms, clattering footsteps and beeping horns. Hutch liked the night best, when the noise level dropped, and he could hear the small rhythms of the earth. Sleepy pigeons perched on the electrical above the heads of the chattering streetwalkers plying their trade. He and Starsky prowled their beat, listening for that particular skip in the music of the street that signaled danger. All too often, the cacophony of bullets, anger and hatred drowned out all but the very loudest evidence of joy and hope.

When the unending parade of cruelty and violence on the streets caused the song in Hutch's soul to diminish and turn dark—Bach's G Minor Fugue or Beethoven's Fifth Symphony thundering in his ears—Starsky was there, to buoy him up from the dregs of despair.

As the years went by, Hutch counted on Starsky's steady presence; as a friend, nothing more. Every once in a while, he'd look across the seat of the Torino and fall, drowning in those astonishingly blue eyes, just as he had on that morning in front of the academy. He'd catch himself wondering, ever so briefly, in the interlude between dispatch calling them to a crime scene and Starsky grousing about Hutch dripping gooseberry jam on the upholstery, what it would be like to wake up to those blue eyes. To fall asleep right next to Starsky, their breath intermingling, and lean in for one last good night kiss.

Did Starsky think about that, too?

But for the most part, that was simply more background music underscoring the louder chorus of laughter, friendship and camaraderie that brought him joy.

Until the day he found Starsky lying against the wheel of the Torino, dying with every beat of his heart. Blood, too red and thick, poured from the bullet wounds piercing Starsky's chest, and Hutch lost hope. Lost all focus except that of his friend's face, slack and pale.

Starsky opened his eyes once, just as the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance for a siren-clanging race to the hospital. Those blue eyes were dim, Starsky's light flickering, but Hutch still drowned in their depths, feeling the shockingly cold water of near death closing over his head. How could he survive if Starsky died?

For two days, the same dirge that had played at his Granddad's funeral looped endlessly in his head. An organ accompanied by a lone bagpipe, a strange but oddly suitable convergence of celestial and alien, the ululation for the Hutchinson family's grief. It was the death knell of Hutch's love, achingly sad, but he couldn't cry, couldn't relax until Starsky declared himself once and for all.

Would it be heaven or earth?

"What if…" Once Starsky's by-word, became Hutch's keystone. And "If only…"

If Starsky lived, Hutch would tell him the truth. What he'd imagined with every replaying of Blueberry Hill. That it wasn't just their friendship that kept him singing—kept Hutch alive-- it was love.

A real love, not the overblown infatuated pop song that had tied him too tightly to Vanessa. Nor the romantic ballad that had bowled him over with Gillian, or even Abby. His love for Starsky was a strong, true—an adagio played in the coordinated beat of their hearts. No other music mattered anymore, just their own chorale born of friendship, promise and sweat.

Starsky survived and lived. Hutch did likewise.

Starsky came home from the hospital on a day late in August—Hutch's birthday. August 28th. It was a day full of promise and hope. Every moment sparkled. Starsky had rewritten the coda, this was not the end. If he was joyful, Hutch was ecstatic.

"The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill, And lingered till my dreams came true…"

He sang out loud, no longer caring what the nurses and doctors thought when he marched down the hospital corridor for the very last time. The refurbished Torino was at the curb, waiting to bring Starsky home. They drove out of the hospital parking lot without looking back.

On the freeway, Hutch looked across the seat of the car, caught Starsky's bright blue eyes and held on tight. This was the right moment, this was his song of love.

Starsky, ever intuitive—truly the brains of their duo, beat him to it. "You remember a long time ago, back when dinosaurs dipped their toenails in the La Brea tar pits, and we were cadets at the academy?"

"Hard to forget, buddy," Hutch said with affection. He was sure that he'd burst with happiness, maybe burst into song the way Starsky sometimes did. Today, he would proclaim his love, loud and proud. "Starsk, I want to tell…"

"I'm not finished." Starsky halted his momentum with a smirky grin. "You're supposed to coddle the one who was in the hospital, give 'em chocolates—"

"Which I did, against your nurse's better judgment," Hutch reminded. "And stuffed veal."

"Which was tasty, what little I ate. I think the head nurse scarfed down the rest." Starsky rubbed his chest over his healing scars. "You gotta grant my requests, don't you? It's the law when a guy's been hurt."

"I have no recollection of studying that at the academy." Hutch wrestled with the Torino's sticky steering wheel, turning right onto Starsky's street. "Or in law school."

"It was one of my ma's laws, then," Starsky said with a twinkle in his eye, and Hutch was lost. He would grant Starsky whatever wish he made. "You remember one night after we were studying, I asked you to sleep on my couch?"

"Vaguely," Hutch laughed. That must have been the first time, since he'd slept on Starsky's couch many, many other times since in the course of their partnership.

"You had to go home to Vanessa," Starsky said. He slid a pair of sunglasses up his nose, and stared out the windshield as if he couldn't quite say what he'd meant to while looking over at Hutch. "Well, you don't have to anymore."

"No," Hutch agreed. Was it just him, or was the faint tune that had played in his heart for so long suddenly deafening? Starsky must be able to hear that intermezzo, the bridge that would connect all he'd ever hoped for.

"And, you've slept on my couch dozens of times."

"Very true."

"The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill, And lingered till my dreams came true…"

"So, I was wondering, this time." Starsky paused just as Hutch pulled the Torino up into the driveway. "Since you crawled into bed with me once already, two weeks ago, if…"

"Yes," Hutch said.

 

FIN

If music be the food of love, play on.  
William Shakespeare


End file.
